“I read your ad in the paper,” I said awkwardly. “I wanted to know something about the place.”

He was apparently a busy man. He told me the facts swiftly, as if he’d memorized them from a list, and I had difficulty taking it all in.

The property, he said, was about a hundred and thirty miles northwest of Toronto. He wanted forty-four thousand dollars, which he said was a good price. Nothing grew but weeds and trees. The one actual field had not been cultivated for some years. There were deer, which would make it a satisfactory hunting retreat, but it wasn’t good for much else. There was a small town not far away, but the place itself was off an old country gravel road.

Was I a hunter, he asked, amused. No, I said, I just thought it might be an interesting — second home. Suddenly I thought, “Yes, that’s it, if we could afford it, it would be good for the kids and I to have another place to go in the summer, and Stephen too on his holidays, he doesn’t hunt but still....”

And that’s what I was thinking when I agreed to go with Mr. Chapman two days later to see it. Irv, he said, call me Irv.

The knowledge of the place gave me an energy that carried me swiftly, easily, through those two days. I had an adventure to look forward to. I shopped and cooked and cleaned and listened to Elliott and Katie and Stephen, and I loved them. “You look wonderful,” Stephen said hopefully.

I tried to tell myself the property might be nothing, that we couldn’t afford it, or that Stephen would think it was a stupid idea. But those doubts weren’t real, and the advertisement and the draw it had on me were. Something was out there waiting for me, I saw it clearly, there was no hesitation, and my heart was ahead in the time when Mr. Chapman-call-me-Irv and I would travel to this place. There wasn’t even a picture of it in my mind; just an idea. It felt like something solid.

(I find it odd now, remembering who I was then, that I did not question that feeling.)